Saturday, September 29, 2012

The Ground Continues to Shrink Under the "Robocon"-mongers

This is a news story that has seemingly escaped the notice of many of those obsessed with the so-called "Robocon" robo-call scandal. And considering that it pertains directly to something routinely treated as a smoking gun strongly supporting the notion that someone in the Conservative Party organized a campaign of misleading robo-calls with the party's knowledge.

That would-be "smoking gun" was a claim, in an Elections Canada affidavit, that Michael Sona had talked about organizing misleading robo-calls. It turns out this isn't true.

Elections Canada investigator Al Matthews submitted an affidavit in March 2012 that made this precise claim. But Matthews has since backed away from that allegation, insisting that it was a mistake.

“In an earlier [sworn affidavit] I wrote that Sona called [Matthew] McBain ‘about a
campaign of disinformation such as making a misleading poll-moving
call,’” Matthews wrote in a subsequent affidavit later in May 2012.
“On checking I realize that in both interviews Mr. McBain … did not
recall Sona as relating the call to ‘disinformation’ or about a
‘misleading poll moving call,’ only that he wanted to set up an autodial
call that would not track back to the Burke campaign.”

It seems worth noting that such an autodial call would be illegal according to CRTC regulations -- something that Sona may not have known at the time, but very likely knows now.

This allegation against Sona has been seized on by "Robocon"-mongers time and time again as a smoking gun suggesting decision-makers in the party knew about it and condoned it. Sona was the communications director for the Marty Burke campaign, so had the allegations against Sona been true it might not have been that unreasonable.

Unfortunately for them, it apparently isn't true.

It's enough to make you wonder just how much more of the allegations aren't true.